Known powered rail vehicle systems include one or more powered units and, in certain cases, one or more non-powered rail cars. The powered units supply tractive force to propel the powered units and cars. The non-powered cars hold or store goods and/or passengers. (“Non-powered” rail car generally encompasses any rail car without an on-board source of motive power.) For example, some known powered rail vehicle systems include a rail vehicle system (e.g., train) having locomotives and cars for conveying goods and/or passengers along a track. Some known powered rail vehicle systems include several powered units. For example, the systems may include a lead powered unit, such as a lead locomotive, and one or more remote or trailing powered units, such as trailing locomotives, that are located behind and (directly or indirectly) coupled with the lead powered unit. The lead and remote powered units supply tractive force to propel the vehicle system along the track.
The tractive force required to convey the powered units and cars along the track may vary during a trip. For example, due to various parameters that change during a trip, the tractive force that is necessary to move the powered units and the cars along the track may vary. These changing parameters may include the curvature and/or grade of the track, speed limits and/or requirements of the system, and the like. As these parameters change during a trip, the total tractive effort, or force, that is required to propel the vehicle system along the track also changes.
While the required tractive effort may change during a trip, the operators of these powered rail vehicle systems do not have the ability to remotely turn the electrical power systems of remote powered units on or off during the trip. For example, an operator in a lead locomotive does not have the ability to remotely turn one or more of the trailing locomotives' electrical power on or off, if the tractive effort required to propel the train changes during a segment of the trip while the rail vehicle system is moving. Instead, the operator may only have the ability to locally turn on or off the remote powered units by manually boarding each such unit of the rail vehicle system.
Some known powered rail vehicle systems provide an operator in a lead locomotive with the ability to change the throttle of trailing locomotives (referred to as distributed power operations). But, these known systems do not provide the operator with the ability to turn the trailing locomotives off. Instead, the operator must turn down the throttle of the trailing locomotives that he or she wants to turn off and wait for an auto engine start/stop (AESS) device in the trailing locomotives to turn the locomotives off. Some known AESS devices do not turn the trailing locomotives off until one or more engine- or motor-related parameters are within a predetermined range. For example, some known AESS devices may not shut off the engine of a trailing locomotive until the temperature of the engine decreases to a predetermined threshold. If the time period between the operator turning down the throttle of the trailing locomotives and the temperature of the engines decreasing to the predetermined threshold is significant, then the amount of fuel that is unnecessarily consumed by the trailing locomotives can be significant.